Chapter VI

The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager,

Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish,
Miss Charlotte Bartlett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive
Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them.

It was Phaethon who drove them to Fiesole that memorable day, a youth all
irresponsibility and fire, recklessly urging his master’s horses up the stony hill. Mr.
Beebe recognized him at once. Neither the Ages of Faith nor the Age of Doubt had
touched him; he was Phaethon in Tuscany driving a cab. And it was Persephone whom he
asked leave to pick up on the way, saying that she was his sister—Persephone, tall and
slender and pale, returning with the Spring to her mother’s cottage, and still shading her
eyes from the unaccustomed light. To her Mr. Eager objected, saying that here was the thin
edge of the wedge, and one must guard against imposition. But the ladies interceded,
and when it had been made clear that it was a very great favour, the goddess was allowed to
mount beside the god.

Phaethon at once slipped the left rein over her head, thus enabling himself to drive with his
arm round her waist. She did not mind. Mr. Eager, who sat with his back to the horses, saw
nothing of the indecorous proceeding, and continued his conversation with Lucy. The other
two occupants of the carriage were old Mr. Emerson and Miss Lavish. For a dreadful thing
had happened: Mr. Beebe, without consulting Mr. Eager, had doubled the size of the party.
And though Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish had planned all the morning how the people
were to sit, at the critical moment when the carriages came round they lost their heads, and
Miss Lavish got in with Lucy, while Miss Bartlett, with George Emerson and Mr. Beebe,
followed on behind.

It was hard on the poor chaplain to have his partie carrée thus transformed. Tea at a
Renaissance villa, if he had ever meditated it, was now impossible. Lucy and Miss
Bartlett had a certain style about them, and Mr. Beebe, though unreliable, was a man of
parts. But a shoddy lady writer and a journalist who had murdered his wife in the sight of
God—they should enter no villa at his introduction.

Lucy, elegantly dressed in white, sat erect and nervous amid these explosive
ingredients, attentive to Mr. Eager, repressive towards Miss Lavish, watchful of old Mr.
Emerson, hitherto fortunately asleep, thanks to a heavy lunch and the drowsy
atmosphere of Spring. She looked on the expedition as the work of Fate. But for it she
would have avoided George Emerson successfully. In an open manner he had shown that
he wished to continue their intimacy. She had refused, not because she disliked him, but
because she did not know what had happened, and suspected that he did know. And
this frightened her.
For the real event—whatever it was—had taken place, not in the Loggia, but by the river. To
behave wildly at the sight of death is pardonable. But to discuss it afterwards, to pass
from discussion into silence, and through silence into sympathy, that is an error, not of
a startled emotion, but of the whole fabric. There was really something blameworthy (she
thought) in their joint contemplation of the shadowy stream, in the common impulse which
had turned them to the house without the passing of a look or word. This sense of
wickedness had been slight at first. She had nearly joined the party to the Torre del Gallo.
But each time that she avoided George it became more imperative that she should
avoid him again. And now celestial irony, working through her cousin and two clergymen,
did not suffer her to leave Florence till she had made this expedition with him through the
hills.

Meanwhile Mr. Eager held her in civil converse; their little tiff was over.

“So, Miss Honeychurch, you are travelling? As a student of art?”

“Oh, dear me, no—oh, no!”

“Perhaps as a student of human nature,” interposed Miss Lavish, “like myself?”

“Oh, no. I am here as a tourist.”

“Oh, indeed,” said Mr. Eager. “Are you indeed? If you will not think me rude, we residents
sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little—handed about like a parcel of goods from
Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, living herded together in pensions or hotels,
quite unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker, their one anxiety to get ‘done’ or
‘through’ and go on somewhere else. The result is, they mix up towns, rivers, palaces in one
inextricable whirl. You know the American girl in Punch who says: ‘Say, poppa, what did we
see at Rome?’ And the father replies: ‘Why, guess Rome was the place where we saw the
yaller dog.’ There’s travelling for you. Ha! ha! ha!”

“I quite agree,” said Miss Lavish, who had several times tried to interrupt his mordant wit.
“The narrowness and superficiality of the Anglo-Saxon tourist is nothing less than a
menace.”

“Quite so. Now, the English colony at Florence, Miss Honeychurch—and it is of

considerable size, though, of course, not all equally—a few are here for trade, for example.
But the greater part are students. Lady Helen Laverstock is at present busy over Fra
Angelico. I mention her name because we are passing her villa on the left. No, you can only
see it if you stand—no, do not stand; you will fall. She is very proud of that thick hedge.
Inside, perfect seclusion. One might have gone back six hundred years. Some critics
believe that her garden was the scene of The Decameron, which lends it an additional
interest, does it not?”

“It does indeed!” cried Miss Lavish. “Tell me, where do they place the scene of that
wonderful seventh day?”
But Mr. Eager proceeded to tell Miss Honeychurch that on the right lived Mr. Someone
Something, an American of the best type—so rare!—and that the Somebody Elses
were farther down the hill. “Doubtless you know her monographs in the series of ‘Mediæval
Byways’? He is working at Gemistus Pletho. Sometimes as I take tea in their beautiful
grounds I hear, over the wall, the electric tram squealing up the new road with its loads
of hot, dusty, unintelligent tourists who are going to ‘do’ Fiesole in an hour in order that
they may say they have been there, and I think—think—I think how little they think what lies
so near them.”

During this speech the two figures on the box were sporting with each other
disgracefully. Lucy had a spasm of envy. Granted that they wished to misbehave, it was
pleasant for them to be able to do so. They were probably the only people enjoying
the expedition. The carriage swept with agonizing jolts up through the Piazza of Fiesole
and into the Settignano road.

“Piano! piano!” said Mr. Eager, elegantly waving his hand over his head.

“Va bene, signore, va bene, va bene,” crooned the driver, and whipped his horses up again.

Now Mr. Eager and Miss Lavish began to talk against each other on the subject of Alessio
Baldovinetti. Was he a cause of the Renaissance, or was he one of its manifestations? The
other carriage was left behind. As the pace increased to a gallop the large, slumbering
form of Mr. Emerson was thrown against the chaplain with the regularity of a machine.

“Piano! piano!” said he, with a martyred look at Lucy.

An extra lurch made him turn angrily in his seat. Phaethon, who for some time had been
endeavoring to kiss Persephone, had just succeeded.

A little scene ensued, which, as Miss Bartlett said afterwards, was most unpleasant. The
horses were stopped, the lovers were ordered to disentangle themselves, the boy was to
lose his pourboire, the girl was immediately to get down.

“She is my sister,” said he, turning round on them with piteous eyes.

Mr. Eager took the trouble to tell him that he was a liar.

Phaethon hung down his head, not at the matter of the accusation, but at its manner. At
this point Mr. Emerson, whom the shock of stopping had awoke, declared that the lovers
must on no account be separated, and patted them on the back to signify his approval.
And Miss Lavish, though unwilling to ally him, felt bound to support the cause of
Bohemianism.

“Most certainly I would let them be,” she cried. “But I dare say I shall receive scant
support. I have always flown in the face of the conventions all my life. This is what I call an
adventure.”
“We must not submit,” said Mr. Eager. “I knew he was trying it on. He is treating us as if
we were a party of Cook’s tourists.”

“Surely no!” said Miss Lavish, her ardour visibly decreasing.

The other carriage had drawn up behind, and sensible Mr. Beebe called out that after this
warning the couple would be sure to behave themselves properly.

“Leave them alone,” Mr. Emerson begged the chaplain, of whom he stood in no awe. “Do
we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there? To
be driven by lovers—A king might envy us, and if we part them it’s more like sacrilege
than anything I know.”

Here the voice of Miss Bartlett was heard saying that a crowd had begun to collect.

Mr. Eager, who suffered from an over-fluent tongue rather than a resolute will, was
determined to make himself heard. He addressed the driver again. Italian in the mouth of
Italians is a deep-voiced stream, with unexpected cataracts and boulders to preserve it from
monotony. In Mr. Eager’s mouth it resembled nothing so much as an acid whistling
fountain which played ever higher and higher, and quicker and quicker, and more and
more shrilly, till abruptly it was turned off with a click.

“Signorina!” said the man to Lucy, when the display had ceased. Why should he appeal to
Lucy?

“Signorina!” echoed Persephone in her glorious contralto. She pointed at the other carriage.
Why?

For a moment the two girls looked at each other. Then Persephone got down from the box.

“Victory at last!” said Mr. Eager, smiting his hands together as the carriages started again.

“It is not victory,” said Mr. Emerson. “It is defeat. You have parted two people who were
happy.”

Mr. Eager shut his eyes. He was obliged to sit next to Mr. Emerson, but he would not speak
to him. The old man was refreshed by sleep, and took up the matter warmly. He
commanded Lucy to agree with him; he shouted for support to his son.

“We have tried to buy what cannot be bought with money. He has bargained to drive us, and
he is doing it. We have no rights over his soul.”

Miss Lavish frowned. It is hard when a person you have classed as typically British
speaks out of his character.

“He was not driving us well,” she said. “He jolted us.”
“That I deny. It was as restful as sleeping. Aha! he is jolting us now. Can you wonder? He
would like to throw us out, and most certainly he is justified. And if I were superstitious I’d be
frightened of the girl, too. It doesn’t do to injure young people. Have you ever heard of
Lorenzo de Medici?”

Miss Lavish bristled.

“Most certainly I have. Do you refer to Lorenzo il Magnifico, or to Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, or
to Lorenzo surnamed Lorenzino on account of his diminutive stature?”

“The Lord knows. Possibly he does know, for I refer to Lorenzo the poet. He wrote a line—so
I heard yesterday—which runs like this: ‘Don’t go fighting against the Spring.’”

Mr. Eager could not resist the opportunity for erudition.

“Non fate guerra al Maggio,” he murmured. “‘War not with the May’ would render a correct
meaning.”

“The point is, we have warred with it. Look.” He pointed to the Val d’Arno, which was visible
far below them, through the budding trees. “Fifty miles of Spring, and we’ve come up to
admire them. Do you suppose there’s any difference between Spring in nature and
Spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper,
ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.”

No one encouraged him to talk. Presently Mr. Eager gave a signal for the carriages to stop
and marshalled the party for their ramble on the hill. A hollow like a great amphitheatre, full
of terraced steps and misty olives, now lay between them and the heights of Fiesole, and
the road, still following its curve, was about to sweep on to a promontory which stood out in
the plain. It was this promontory, uncultivated, wet, covered with bushes and occasional
trees, which had caught the fancy of Alessio Baldovinetti nearly five hundred years before.
He had ascended it, that diligent and rather obscure master, possibly with an eye to
business, possibly for the joy of ascending. Standing there, he had seen that view of the
Val d’Arno and distant Florence, which he afterwards had introduced not very effectively
into his work. But where exactly had he stood? That was the question which Mr. Eager
hoped to solve now. And Miss Lavish, whose nature was attracted by anything
problematical, had become equally enthusiastic.

But it is not easy to carry the pictures of Alessio Baldovinetti in your head, even if you have
remembered to look at them before starting. And the haze in the valley increased the
difficulty of the quest.

The party sprang about from tuft to tuft of grass, their anxiety to keep together being only
equalled by their desire to go different directions. Finally they split into groups. Lucy
clung to Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish; the Emersons returned to hold laborious converse
with the drivers; while the two clergymen, who were expected to have topics in common,
were left to each other.
The two elder ladies soon threw off the mask. In the audible whisper that was now so
familiar to Lucy they began to discuss, not Alessio Baldovinetti, but the drive. Miss
Bartlett had asked Mr. George Emerson what his profession was, and he had answered “the
railway.” She was very sorry that she had asked him. She had no idea that it would be
such a dreadful answer, or she would not have asked him. Mr. Beebe had turned the
conversation so cleverly, and she hoped that the young man was not very much hurt at
her asking him.

“The railway!” gasped Miss Lavish. “Oh, but I shall die! Of course it was the railway!” She
could not control her mirth. “He is the image of a porter—on, on the South-Eastern.”

“Eleanor, be quiet,” plucking at her vivacious companion. “Hush! They’ll hear—the

Emersons—”

“I can’t stop. Let me go my wicked way. A porter—”

“Eleanor!”

“I’m sure it’s all right,” put in Lucy. “The Emersons won’t hear, and they wouldn’t mind if they
did.”

Miss Lavish did not seem pleased at this.

“Miss Honeychurch listening!” she said rather crossly. “Pouf! Wouf! You naughty girl! Go
away!”

“Oh, Lucy, you ought to be with Mr. Eager, I’m sure.”

“I can’t find them now, and I don’t want to either.”

“Mr. Eager will be offended. It is your party.”

“Please, I’d rather stop here with you.”

“No, I agree,” said Miss Lavish. “It’s like a school feast; the boys have got separated from the
girls. Miss Lucy, you are to go. We wish to converse on high topics unsuited for your
ear.”

The girl was stubborn. As her time at Florence drew to its close she was only at ease
amongst those to whom she felt indifferent. Such a one was Miss Lavish, and such for
the moment was Charlotte. She wished she had not called attention to herself; they were
both annoyed at her remark and seemed determined to get rid of her.

“How tired one gets,” said Miss Bartlett. “Oh, I do wish Freddy and your mother could be
here.”

Unselfishness with Miss Bartlett had entirely usurped the functions of enthusiasm. Lucy did
not look at the view either. She would not enjoy anything till she was safe at Rome.
“Then sit you down,” said Miss Lavish. “Observe my foresight.”

With many a smile she produced two of those mackintosh squares that protect the frame of
the tourist from damp grass or cold marble steps. She sat on one; who was to sit on the
other?

“Lucy; without a moment’s doubt, Lucy. The ground will do for me. Really I have not had
rheumatism for years. If I do feel it coming on I shall stand. Imagine your mother’s
feelings if I let you sit in the wet in your white linen.” She sat down heavily where the
ground looked particularly moist. “Here we are, all settled delightfully. Even if my dress is
thinner it will not show so much, being brown. Sit down, dear; you are too unselfish; you
don’t assert yourself enough.” She cleared her throat. “Now don’t be alarmed; this isn’t a
cold. It’s the tiniest cough, and I have had it three days. It’s nothing to do with sitting here at
all.”

There was only one way of treating the situation. At the end of five minutes Lucy departed in
search of Mr. Beebe and Mr. Eager, vanquished by the mackintosh square.

She addressed herself to the drivers, who were sprawling in the carriages, perfuming the
cushions with cigars. The miscreant, a bony young man scorched black by the sun, rose to
greet her with the courtesy of a host and the assurance of a relative.

“Dove?” said Lucy, after much anxious thought.

His face lit up. Of course he knew where. Not so far either. His arm swept three-fourths of
the horizon. He should just think he did know where. He pressed his finger-tips to his
forehead and then pushed them towards her, as if oozing with visible extract of knowledge.

More seemed necessary. What was the Italian for “clergyman”?

“Dove buoni uomini?” said she at last.

Good? Scarcely the adjective for those noble beings! He showed her his cigar.

“Uno—piu—piccolo,” was her next remark, implying “Has the cigar been given to you by Mr.
Beebe, the smaller of the two good men?”

She was correct as usual. He tied the horse to a tree, kicked it to make it stay quiet,
dusted the carriage, arranged his hair, remoulded his hat, encouraged his moustache,
and in rather less than a quarter of a minute was ready to conduct her. Italians are born
knowing the way. It would seem that the whole earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a
chess-board, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well as the
squares. Any one can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from God.

He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets. She thanked him with real
pleasure. In the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct. For the
first time she felt the influence of Spring. His arm swept the horizon gracefully; violets,
like other things, existed in great profusion there; “would she like to see them?”

“Ma buoni uomini.”

He bowed. Certainly. Good men first, violets afterwards. They proceeded briskly through
the undergrowth, which became thicker and thicker. They were nearing the edge of the
promontory, and the view was stealing round them, but the brown network of the
bushes shattered it into countless pieces. He was occupied in his cigar, and in holding
back the pliant boughs. She was rejoicing in her escape from dullness. Not a step, not a
twig, was unimportant to her.

“What is that?”

There was a voice in the wood, in the distance behind them. The voice of Mr. Eager? He
shrugged his shoulders. An Italian’s ignorance is sometimes more remarkable than his
knowledge. She could not make him understand that perhaps they had missed the
clergymen. The view was forming at last; she could discern the river, the golden plain, other
hills.

“Eccolo!” he exclaimed.

At the same moment the ground gave way, and with a cry she fell out of the wood. Light
and beauty enveloped her. She had fallen on to a little open terrace, which was covered
with violets from end to end.

“Courage!” cried her companion, now standing some six feet above. “Courage and love.”

She did not answer. From her feet the ground sloped sharply into view, and violets ran
down in rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying
round the tree stems collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of
azure foam. But never again were they in such profusion; this terrace was the well-head,
the primal source whence beauty gushed out to water the earth.

Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the
good man that she had expected, and he was alone.

George had turned at the sound of her arrival. For a moment he contemplated her, as one
who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat
against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly
forward and kissed her.

Before she could speak, almost before she could feel, a voice called, “Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!”
The silence of life had been broken by Miss Bartlett who stood brown against the view.

Chapter VII
They Return
Some complicated game had been playing up and down the hillside all the afternoon. What
it was and exactly how the players had sided, Lucy was slow to discover. Mr. Eager had met
them with a questioning eye. Charlotte had repulsed him with much small talk. Mr. Emerson,
seeking his son, was told whereabouts to find him. Mr. Beebe, who wore the heated aspect
of a neutral, was bidden to collect the factions for the return home. There was a
general sense of groping and bewilderment. Pan had been amongst them—not the great
god Pan, who has been buried these two thousand years, but the little god Pan, who
presides over social contretemps and unsuccessful picnics. Mr. Beebe had lost
everyone, and had consumed in solitude the tea-basket which he had brought up as a
pleasant surprise. Miss Lavish had lost Miss Bartlett. Lucy had lost Mr. Eager. Mr.
Emerson had lost George. Miss Bartlett had lost a mackintosh square. Phaethon had
lost the game.

That last fact was undeniable. He climbed on to the box shivering, with his collar up,
prophesying the swift approach of bad weather. “Let us go immediately,” he told them. “The
signorino will walk.”

“All the way? He will be hours,” said Mr. Beebe.

“Apparently. I told him it was unwise.” He would look no one in the face; perhaps defeat was
particularly mortifying for him. He alone had played skilfully, using the whole of his
instinct, while the others had used scraps of their intelligence. He alone had divined
what things were, and what he wished them to be. He alone had interpreted the message
that Lucy had received five days before from the lips of a dying man. Persephone, who
spends half her life in the grave—she could interpret it also. Not so these English. They
gain knowledge slowly, and perhaps too late.

The thoughts of a cab-driver, however just, seldom affect the lives of his employers. He was
the most competent of Miss Bartlett’s opponents, but infinitely the least dangerous.
Once back in the town, he and his insight and his knowledge would trouble English ladies no
more. Of course, it was most unpleasant; she had seen his black head in the bushes; he
might make a tavern story out of it. But after all, what have we to do with taverns? Real
menace belongs to the drawing-room. It was of drawing-room people that Miss Bartlett
thought as she journeyed downwards towards the fading sun. Lucy sat beside her; Mr.
Eager sat opposite, trying to catch her eye; he was vaguely suspicious. They spoke of
Alessio Baldovinetti.

Rain and darkness came on together. The two ladies huddled together under an inadequate
parasol. There was a lightning flash, and Miss Lavish who was nervous, screamed from the
carriage in front. At the next flash, Lucy screamed also. Mr. Eager addressed her
professionally:

“Courage, Miss Honeychurch, courage and faith. If I might say so, there is something
almost blasphemous in this horror of the elements. Are we seriously to suppose that all
these clouds, all this immense electrical display, is simply called into existence to extinguish
you or me?”
“No—of course—”

“Even from the scientific standpoint the chances against our being struck are enormous. The
steel knives, the only articles which might attract the current, are in the other carriage. And,
in any case, we are infinitely safer than if we were walking. Courage—courage and faith.”

Under the rug, Lucy felt the kindly pressure of her cousin’s hand. At times our need for a
sympathetic gesture is so great that we care not what exactly it signifies or how much we
may have to pay for it afterwards. Miss Bartlett, by this timely exercise of her muscles,
gained more than she would have got in hours of preaching or cross examination.

She renewed it when the two carriages stopped, half into Florence.

“Mr. Eager!” called Mr. Beebe. “We want your assistance. Will you interpret for us?”

“George!” cried Mr. Emerson. “Ask your driver which way George went. The boy may lose
his way. He may be killed.”

“Go, Mr. Eager,” said Miss Bartlett, “don’t ask our driver; our driver is no help. Go and
support poor Mr. Beebe—, he is nearly demented.”

“He may be killed!” cried the old man. “He may be killed!”

“Typical behaviour,” said the chaplain, as he quitted the carriage. “In the presence of
reality that kind of person invariably breaks down.”

“What does he know?” whispered Lucy as soon as they were alone. “Charlotte, how much
does Mr. Eager know?”

“Nothing, dearest; he knows nothing. But—” she pointed at the driver—“he knows
everything. Dearest, had we better? Shall I?” She took out her purse. “It is dreadful to be
entangled with low-class people. He saw it all.” Tapping Phaethon’s back with her guide-
book, she said, “Silenzio!” and offered him a franc.

“Va bene,” he replied, and accepted it. As well this ending to his day as any. But Lucy, a
mortal maid, was disappointed in him.

There was an explosion up the road. The storm had struck the overhead wire of the tramline,
and one of the great supports had fallen. If they had not stopped perhaps they might have
been hurt. They chose to regard it as a miraculous preservation, and the floods of love
and sincerity, which fructify every hour of life, burst forth in tumult. They descended
from the carriages; they embraced each other. It was as joyful to be forgiven past
unworthinesses as to forgive them. For a moment they realized vast possibilities of
good.

The older people recovered quickly. In the very height of their emotion they knew it to be
unmanly or unladylike. Miss Lavish calculated that, even if they had continued, they would
not have been caught in the accident. Mr. Eager mumbled a temperate prayer. But the
drivers, through miles of dark squalid road, poured out their souls to the dryads and
the saints, and Lucy poured out hers to her cousin.

“Charlotte, dear Charlotte, kiss me. Kiss me again. Only you can understand me. You
warned me to be careful. And I—I thought I was developing.”

“Do not cry, dearest. Take your time.”

“I have been obstinate and silly—worse than you know, far worse. Once by the river—
Oh, but he isn’t killed—he wouldn’t be killed, would he?”

The thought disturbed her repentance. As a matter of fact, the storm was worst along the
road; but she had been near danger, and so she thought it must be near to everyone.

“I trust not. One would always pray against that.”

“He is really—I think he was taken by surprise, just as I was before. But this time I’m not to
blame; I want you to believe that. I simply slipped into those violets. No, I want to be really
truthful. I am a little to blame. I had silly thoughts. The sky, you know, was gold, and
the ground all blue, and for a moment he looked like someone in a book.”

“In a book?”

“Heroes—gods—the nonsense of schoolgirls.”

“And then?”

“But, Charlotte, you know what happened then.”

Miss Bartlett was silent. Indeed, she had little more to learn. With a certain amount of insight
she drew her young cousin affectionately to her. All the way back Lucy’s body was shaken
by deep sighs, which nothing could repress.

“I want to be truthful,” she whispered. “It is so hard to be absolutely truthful.”

“Don’t be troubled, dearest. Wait till you are calmer. We will talk it over before bed-time in my
room.”

So they re-entered the city with hands clasped. It was a shock to the girl to find how far
emotion had ebbed in others. The storm had ceased, and Mr. Emerson was easier about
his son. Mr. Beebe had regained good humour, and Mr. Eager was already snubbing Miss
Lavish. Charlotte alone she was sure of—Charlotte, whose exterior concealed so much
insight and love.

The luxury of self-exposure kept her almost happy through the long evening. She thought
not so much of what had happened as of how she should describe it. All her sensations,
her spasms of courage, her moments of unreasonable joy, her mysterious discontent,
should be carefully laid before her cousin. And together in divine confidence they would
disentangle and interpret them all.

“At last,” thought she, “I shall understand myself. I shan’t again be troubled by things
that come out of nothing, and mean I don’t know what.”

Miss Alan asked her to play. She refused vehemently. Music seemed to her the
employment of a child. She sat close to her cousin, who, with commendable patience, was
listening to a long story about lost luggage. When it was over she capped it by a story of her
own. Lucy became rather hysterical with the delay. In vain she tried to check, or at all
events to accelerate, the tale. It was not till a late hour that Miss Bartlett had recovered her
luggage and could say in her usual tone of gentle reproach:

“Well, dear, I at all events am ready for Bedfordshire. Come into my room, and I will give a
good brush to your hair.”

With some solemnity the door was shut, and a cane chair placed for the girl. Then Miss
Bartlett said “So what is to be done?”

She was unprepared for the question. It had not occurred to her that she would have to do
anything. A detailed exhibition of her emotions was all that she had counted upon.

“What is to be done? A point, dearest, which you alone can settle.”

The rain was streaming down the black windows, and the great room felt damp and chilly.
One candle burnt trembling on the chest of drawers close to Miss Bartlett’s toque, which
cast monstrous and fantastic shadows on the bolted door. A tram roared by in the
dark, and Lucy felt unaccountably sad, though she had long since dried her eyes. She
lifted them to the ceiling, where the griffins and bassoons were colourless and vague,
the very ghosts of joy.

“It has been raining for nearly four hours,” she said at last.

Miss Bartlett ignored the remark.

“How do you propose to silence him?”

“The driver?”

“My dear girl, no; Mr. George Emerson.”

Lucy began to pace up and down the room.

“I don’t understand,” she said at last.

She understood very well, but she no longer wished to be absolutely truthful.

“How are you going to stop him talking about it?”

“I have a feeling that talk is a thing he will never do.”

“I, too, intend to judge him charitably. But unfortunately I have met the type before. They
seldom keep their exploits to themselves.”

“Exploits?” cried Lucy, wincing under the horrible plural.

“My poor dear, did you suppose that this was his first? Come here and listen to me. I am
only gathering it from his own remarks. Do you remember that day at lunch when he
argued with Miss Alan that liking one person is an extra reason for liking another?”

“Yes,” said Lucy, whom at the time the argument had pleased.

“Well, I am no prude. There is no need to call him a wicked young man, but obviously he is
thoroughly unrefined. Let us put it down to his deplorable antecedents and education, if you
wish. But we are no farther on with our question. What do you propose to do?”

An idea rushed across Lucy’s brain, which, had she thought of it sooner and made it part
of her, might have proved victorious.

“I propose to speak to him,” said she.

Miss Bartlett uttered a cry of genuine alarm.

“You see, Charlotte, your kindness—I shall never forget it. But—as you said—it is my
affair. Mine and his.”

“And you are going to implore him, to beg him to keep silence?”

“Certainly not. There would be no difficulty. Whatever you ask him he answers, yes or no;
then it is over. I have been frightened of him. But now I am not one little bit.”

“But we fear him for you, dear. You are so young and inexperienced, you have lived
among such nice people, that you cannot realize what men can be—how they can take a
brutal pleasure in insulting a woman whom her sex does not protect and rally round.
This afternoon, for example, if I had not arrived, what would have happened?”

“I can’t think,” said Lucy gravely.

Something in her voice made Miss Bartlett repeat her question, intoning it more vigorously.

“What would have happened if I hadn’t arrived?”

“I can’t think,” said Lucy again.

“When he insulted you, how would you have replied?”

“I hadn’t time to think. You came.”

“Yes, but won’t you tell me now what you would have done?”

“I should have—” She checked herself, and broke the sentence off. She went up to the
dripping window and strained her eyes into the darkness. She could not think what she
would have done.

“Come away from the window, dear,” said Miss Bartlett. “You will be seen from the road.”

Lucy obeyed. She was in her cousin’s power. She could not modulate out the key of
self-abasement in which she had started. Neither of them referred again to her
suggestion that she should speak to George and settle the matter, whatever it was, with him.

Miss Bartlett became plaintive.

“Oh, for a real man! We are only two women, you and I. Mr. Beebe is hopeless. There is
Mr. Eager, but you do not trust him. Oh, for your brother! He is young, but I know that
his sister’s insult would rouse in him a very lion. Thank God, chivalry is not yet dead.
There are still left some men who can reverence woman.”

As she spoke, she pulled off her rings, of which she wore several, and ranged them upon the
pin cushion. Then she blew into her gloves and said:

“It will be a push to catch the morning train, but we must try.”

“What train?”

“The train to Rome.” She looked at her gloves critically.

The girl received the announcement as easily as it had been given.

“When does the train to Rome go?”

“At eight.”

“Signora Bertolini would be upset.”

“We must face that,” said Miss Bartlett, not liking to say that she had given notice already.

“She will make us pay for a whole week’s pension.”

“I expect she will. However, we shall be much more comfortable at the Vyses’ hotel. Isn’t
afternoon tea given there for nothing?”

“Yes, but they pay extra for wine.” After this remark she remained motionless and silent. To
her tired eyes Charlotte throbbed and swelled like a ghostly figure in a dream.
They began to sort their clothes for packing, for there was no time to lose, if they were to
catch the train to Rome. Lucy, when admonished, began to move to and fro between
the rooms, more conscious of the discomforts of packing by candlelight than of a
subtler ill. Charlotte, who was practical without ability, knelt by the side of an empty
trunk, vainly endeavouring to pave it with books of varying thickness and size. She gave
two or three sighs, for the stooping posture hurt her back, and, for all her diplomacy,
she felt that she was growing old. The girl heard her as she entered the room, and was
seized with one of those emotional impulses to which she could never attribute a cause. She
only felt that the candle would burn better, the packing go easier, the world be
happier, if she could give and receive some human love. The impulse had come before
to-day, but never so strongly. She knelt down by her cousin’s side and took her in her arms.

Miss Bartlett returned the embrace with tenderness and warmth. But she was not a stupid
woman, and she knew perfectly well that Lucy did not love her, but needed her to
love. For it was in ominous tones that she said, after a long pause:

“Dearest Lucy, how will you ever forgive me?”

Lucy was on her guard at once, knowing by bitter experience what forgiving Miss
Bartlett meant. Her emotion relaxed, she modified her embrace a little, and she said:

“Charlotte dear, what do you mean? As if I have anything to forgive!”

“You have a great deal, and I have a very great deal to forgive myself, too. I know well how
much I vex you at every turn.”

“But no—”

Miss Bartlett assumed her favourite role, that of the prematurely aged martyr.

“Ah, but yes! I feel that our tour together is hardly the success I had hoped. I might have
known it would not do. You want someone younger and stronger and more in sympathy with
you. I am too uninteresting and old-fashioned—only fit to pack and unpack your
things.”

“Please—”

“My only consolation was that you found people more to your taste, and were often able to
leave me at home. I had my own poor ideas of what a lady ought to do, but I hope I did not
inflict them on you more than was necessary. You had your own way about these rooms, at
all events.”

“You mustn’t say these things,” said Lucy softly.

She still clung to the hope that she and Charlotte loved each other, heart and soul.
They continued to pack in silence.
“I have been a failure,” said Miss Bartlett, as she struggled with the straps of Lucy’s trunk
instead of strapping her own. “Failed to make you happy; failed in my duty to your mother.
She has been so generous to me; I shall never face her again after this disaster.”

“But mother will understand. It is not your fault, this trouble, and it isn’t a disaster either.”

“It is my fault, it is a disaster. She will never forgive me, and rightly. For instance,
what right had I to make friends with Miss Lavish?”

“Every right.”

“When I was here for your sake? If I have vexed you it is equally true that I have neglected
you. Your mother will see this as clearly as I do, when you tell her.”

Lucy, from a cowardly wish to improve the situation, said:

“Why need mother hear of it?”

“But you tell her everything?”

“I suppose I do generally.”

“I dare not break your confidence. There is something sacred in it. Unless you feel that it is a
thing you could not tell her.”

The girl would not be degraded to this.

“Naturally I should have told her. But in case she should blame you in any way, I promise I
will not, I am very willing not to. I will never speak of it either to her or to any one.”

Her promise brought the long-drawn interview to a sudden close. Miss Bartlett pecked
her smartly on both cheeks, wished her good-night, and sent her to her own room.

For a moment the original trouble was in the background. George would seem to have
behaved like a cad throughout; perhaps that was the view which one would take
eventually. At present she neither acquitted nor condemned him; she did not pass
judgement. At the moment when she was about to judge him her cousin’s voice had
intervened, and, ever since, it was Miss Bartlett who had dominated; Miss Bartlett who,
even now, could be heard sighing into a crack in the partition wall; Miss Bartlett, who had
really been neither pliable nor humble nor inconsistent. She had worked like a great
artist; for a time—indeed, for years—she had been meaningless, but at the end there was
presented to the girl the complete picture of a cheerless, loveless world in which the
young rush to destruction until they learn better—a shamefaced world of precautions
and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not seem to bring good, if we may
judge from those who have used them most.

Lucy was suffering from the most grievous wrong which this world has yet
discovered: diplomatic advantage had been taken of her sincerity, of her craving for
sympathy and love. Such a wrong is not easily forgotten. Never again did she expose
herself without due consideration and precaution against rebuff. And such a wrong may
react disastrously upon the soul.

The door-bell rang, and she started to the shutters. Before she reached them she hesitated,
turned, and blew out the candle. Thus it was that, though she saw someone standing in the
wet below, he, though he looked up, did not see her.

To reach his room he had to go by hers. She was still dressed. It struck her that she might
slip into the passage and just say that she would be gone before he was up, and that
their extraordinary intercourse was over.

Whether she would have dared to do this was never proved. At the critical moment Miss
Bartlett opened her own door, and her voice said:

“I wish one word with you in the drawing-room, Mr. Emerson, please.”

Soon their footsteps returned, and Miss Bartlett said: “Good-night, Mr. Emerson.”

His heavy, tired breathing was the only reply; the chaperon had done her work.

Lucy cried aloud: “It isn’t true. It can’t all be true. I want not to be muddled. I want to
grow older quickly.”

Miss Bartlett tapped on the wall.

“Go to bed at once, dear. You need all the rest you can get.”

In the morning they left for Rome.